AC Transit will postpone its years-in-the-making realignment project until next year. Realignment, which involves big changes to bus routes, arrival and departure times, and other important changes was expected to begin in August.
The district’s board voted this week to hit pause. Following the vote, the board said the project’s last round of public hearings, expected for March, were on hold.
“The board of directors considered various factors, such as the impact to various rider groups, operations staffing levels, and ensuring an equitable distribution of resources for transit-dependent and disadvantaged riders,” said AC Transit Board President Joel Young in an statement about the decision to put realignment on hold. He encouraged the public to continue to stay engaged with the realignment process in the future.
AC Transit officials said the timeout is in response to bus operators, transit advocates, and local residents who spoke out against the project’s latest draft and asked for more time to figure out solutions.
Bus riders and transit advocates were most concerned about plans to reduce bus frequencies on several lines. For example, the number of routes currently served by a bus every 10 or 15 minutes is 10. The realignment proposal was to reduce this to five lines.
Laurel Paget-Seekins, a transportation policy advocate for Public Advocates, said it’s important that reductions in service times be equitable.
“If we are going to be having frequency reductions in the short term, it’s critical those reductions don’t overly burden low-income communities who have suffered from historic disinvestment and who have the least time to spare, like hourly workers and students,” she said at the meeting.
Bus operators argued that the shortage of drivers and other staff is a critical issue needing a solution before AC Transit moves to a new schedule.
Like other local and regional transit agencies, AC Transit saw a drop in ridership because of the pandemic. The Transbay line from Oakland to downtown San Francisco, for example, went from being packed with business passengers during commute hours to having mostly empty seats.
During the realignment outreach process, drivers told AC Transit planners that bus schedules get delayed when there are fewer drivers available. This leads to shorter bathroom and lunch breaks, or drivers missing them altogether as they try to catch up on their schedule. When AC Transit planners tried to address these staff concerns in the realignment plan it resulted in bus arrival times becoming longer, which operators said would negatively affect their passengers.
Drivers also rejected a pilot allowing AC Transit to hire non-unionized contractors, which was seen as possibly undermining the union through lower pay.
Not accepting a “very sad plan”
At this week’s board meeting, nearly all transit advocates and drivers said AC Transit’s intertwined reliability and frequency problems are reasons why the agency should not choose to improve one to the detriment of the other. They also said the district needs to figure out a way to find new funding to improve its overall service levels.
“I really care about having a functional, reliable, and frequent transit system that riders can rely on,” said Dory Goldberg, an Oakland resident and co-chair of the People’s Transit Alliance. “We know that at the end of the day, there really is no functional public transit system without the workers that run it on a day-to-day basis.”
Andy Katz, a Berkeley resident and EBMUD director, said service cuts amounted to 15% in service hours. “Recognizing reliability improvements is important, but instead of fully investigating the causes of reliability and potential solutions, there’s this blunt assumption that cutting service to match existing workforce will solve the problem,” Katz said. “While bus operator availability continues to affect service reliability, AC transit should not give up on increasing its workforce, which this plan does.”
Some advocates also said the fast-track schedule that the realignment feedback process was on—condensed to five weeks in the last phase—left behind people who still needed to provide input.
At this week’s board meeting, AC Transit Director Jean Walsh, who represents Ward 2, called the latest draft proposal reducing service “a very sad plan.”
“What we have here is something that we’ve not seen before. It’s totally different. It’s way worse. These are drastic service cuts,” she said.
AC Transit Director Sarah Syed, who represents Ward 3, said on Wednesday that postponing the realignment was the logical thing to do.
“I feel strongly this is a moment we need to pause, that we need to respect what we’ve heard from our local elected officials and not waste the public’s time and our staff’s time advancing a plan that is planning to fail,” she said.
Syed told The Oaklandside the extra time would allow the agency’s staff and directors to lobby grantmaking regional agencies like the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to invest in transit so it can close the $20 million funding gap driving the proposed service cuts.
What happens now for AC Transit’s realignment plans?
The district’s board said going forward it will work with the driver’s union, ATU Local 192, to determine whether the realignment can get back on track and start on March 2025.
AC Transit communications director Robert Lyles told The Oaklandside that board members were “grateful” for the input community members provided over the three outreach phases of the project.
“Their written contributions, submissions by phone, and in-person feedback will continue to serve as the foundation to right-size our bus network in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Lyles said.
Over the next three months, AC Transit staff working on the Realignment project, including its lead planner Michael Eshleman, will refine the draft service plan.
Although realignment is on hold, AC Transit planners still discussed some of their latest findings from community outreach sessions.
People were asked to comment on three proposals for new schedules and routes. They included a “balanced coverage scenario” that expanded bus coverage options, a “frequent service scenario” that called for more buses on popular lines, and an “unconstrained vision scenario” that both expanded service and improved service frequency throughout.
The planners said Wednesday that the “unconstrained” option was the overwhelming favorite, with 62% indicating a “strong like” for it.
Strong support for specific lines has also already influenced AC Transit’s plans. In one draft proposal from November, the 72R rapid bus line that runs along San Pablo Avenue was removed because more frequent non-rapid 72 lines were promised. But people clamored to keep the 72R as a fast alternative. This week, AC Transit had complied and removed any mention of cutting 72R service.
Other changes that are still part of the latest draft proposal but may or may not survive the postponement and future feedback are a redesigned Route 29 on Alcatraz Avenue, a new service into Brooklyn Basin via Route 96, and a new service on Ashby Avenue via Route 27.
